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Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl—
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

#Americans Modern

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Other works by Wallace Stevens...
A Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings,
To the One of Fictive Music

Sister and mother and diviner love… And of the sisterhood of the livin… Most near, most clear, and of the… And of the fragrant mothers the mo… And queen, and of diviner love the…
Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs

It is true that the rivers went no… Tugging at banks, until they seeme… Bland belly-sounds in somnolent tr… That the air was heavy with the br… The breath of turgid summer, and
Poetry Is a Destructive Force

That’s what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing. It is a thing to have, A lion, an ox in his breast,
 1
Nomad Exquisite

As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth The big-finned palm And green vine angering for life, As the immense dew of Florida
 1
Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outs… Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird’s cry at daylight or before…
Sunday Morning

Complacencies of the peignoir, and… Coffee and oranges in a sunny chai… And the green freedom of a cockato… Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice…
Lunar Paraphrase

he moon is the mother of pathos an… When, at the wearier end of Novem… Her old light moves along the bran… Feebly, slowly, depending upon the… When the body of Jesus hangs in a…
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David
To an Old Philosopher in Rome

On the threshold of heaven, the fi… Become the figures of heaven, the… Of men growing small in the distan… Singing, with smaller and still sm… Unintelligible absolution and an e…
A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

The difficulty to think at the end… When the shapeless shadow covers t… And nothing is left except light o… There was the cat slopping its mil… Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, w…
 1
Lulu Gay

Lulu sang of barbarians before the… Of gobs, who called her orchidean, Sniffed her and slapped heavy hand… Upon her. She made the eunuchs ululate.
 1
Depression Before Spring

The cock crows But no queen rises. The hair of my blonde Is dazzling, As the spittle of cows
 1
The Planet on the Table

Ariel was glad he had written his… They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked… Other makings of the sun Were waste and welter
Poem Written at Morning

A sunny day’s complete Poussinian… Divide it from itself. It is this… And it is not. By metaphor you paint A thing. Thus, the pineapple was…
Farewell to Florida

Go on, high ship, since now, upon… The snake has left its skin upon t… Key West sank downward under mass… And silvers and greens spread over… Is at the mast-head and the past i…



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